So, is there anything to it? D'Souza's main source is impeccable - Obama's own book, Dreams from my Father.
In his own writings Obama stresses the centrality of his father not only to his beliefs and values but to his very identity. He calls his memoir "the record of a personal, interior journey--a boy's search for his father and through that search a workable meaning for his life as a black American." And again, "It was into my father's image, the black man, son of Africa, that I'd packed all the attributes I sought in myself." Even though his father was absent for virtually all his life, Obama writes, "My father's voice had nevertheless remained untainted, inspiring, rebuking, granting or withholding approval. You do not work hard enough, Barry. You must help in your people's struggle. Wake up, black man!"
The climax of Obama's narrative is when he goes to Kenya and weeps at his father's grave. It is riveting: "When my tears were finally spent," he writes, "I felt a calmness wash over me. I felt the circle finally close. I realized that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation, no longer a construct of words. I saw that my life in America--the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I'd felt as a boy, the frustration and hope I'd witnessed in Chicago--all of it was connected with this small piece of earth an ocean away, connected by more than the accident of a name or the color of my skin. The pain that I felt was my father's pain."
In an eerie conclusion, Obama writes that "I sat at my father's grave and spoke to him through Africa's red soil." In a sense, through the earth itself, he communes with his father and receives his father's spirit. Obama takes on his father's struggle, not by recovering his body but by embracing his cause. He decides that where Obama Sr. failed, he will succeed. Obama Sr.'s hatred of the colonial system becomes Obama Jr.'s hatred; his botched attempt to set the world right defines his son's objective. Through a kind of sacramental rite at the family tomb, the father's struggle becomes the son's birthright.
D'Souza also adds his own experiences growing up in post-colonial India and shows how anti-colonial attitudes match up with Obama's actions.
Obama's attitude toward the UK and Europe in general only make sense if you believe that he still carries some of his father's resentments. In his first state visit to Obama, them-Prime Minister Gordon Brown brought special one-of-a-kind gifts. In return, he was given a DVD set that will not play in Europe and some junk from the White House gift shop. It is hard to imagine a clearer snub.
Obama went out of his way to improve relations with anti-colonialists such as Hugo Chavez and Iran and has snubbed India and most of Europe. Either he has a bias against countries that he sees as colonial powers (which is ironic when applied to India) or he is trying to punish countries that were friendly to the Bush administration and court countries that were hostile to Bush. Neither makes for a rational foreign policy. You can decide which explanation you are more comfortable with. I have not seen any others advanced.
Obama's domestic policies have also been hard to figure out. He actively dislikes business but he passed on chances to nationalize important industries such as banks and automobile makers. He prefers strict government control while leaving businesses in private hands (with the exception of college loans). To Glenn Beck, this looks like Fascism (the Italian kind, not the German kind). To D'Souza it looks like anti-colonialism. Both have their roots as a "lite" version of socialism so it is hard to trace exactly where he came by this instinct.
Barrack, Sr came to a new country to study then returned, abandoning his wife and child. He made some impact on the new, post-colonial government but ended up a drunken outsider. Being abandoned as a child had a strong affect on Barrack, Jr as shown by his quest to uncover his father's roots. Doubtless one of his motivations is the hope of gaining his father's posthumous approval but that was only one influence. Obama's mother was also anti-capitalist. At one point she refused to attend a business party with her second husband because the Americans there weren't "her people." They were capitalists. In high school hung out with a retired communist who he did not name. In college he hung out with the Marxists and feminists and later spent years as a follower of socialist Saul Alinsky. While his father's attitudes must be part of the forces that motivate Obama, there have been too many other influences to simply classify him as an anti-colonial socialist.
The mystery of Barrack Obama, Jr, continues.
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